


Hide and Seek

by ThetaSigma



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:28:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29468733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThetaSigma/pseuds/ThetaSigma
Summary: It would be easier, Aziraphale thinks, if he could just stop seeing Crowley. Shake hands on a job well-done and walk away.But he can’t. Not just for Crowley’s sake -- who has been very jumpy since the bookshop fire -- but his own, also. Aziraphale genuinely enjoys his company. They can talk about things they can’t with anyone else. He feels most himself around Crowley. And yes, he worries quite a lot about the hapless demon.If only Crowley didn’t want to Talk.Following Armageddon, Crowley is ready to move forward. Aziraphale thinks he needs more time.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 50





	Hide and Seek

_ 2019: _

It’s not that Aziraphale is unhappy that the world didn’t end -- he certainly did enough work ensuring it wouldn’t be to be unhappy about it now -- and it’s not that he is upset that he and Crowley both survived certain extinction, it’s just… there’s a conversation coming. One he really wants to avoid as much and as long as possible.

He’s deft about it, definitely. The day after the failed end, he and Crowley hadn’t seen each other at all. Aziraphale figured Crowley was sleeping off some extreme miracle use and was happy to let him be.

The second day, he put off lunch with “oh my dear, I haven’t quite finished making sure the bookshop is as it was supposed to be. Adam did add several things. They simply  _ must _ be catalogued.”

The third day, he and Crowley went out to lunch, but Aziraphale neatly side-stepped any drinks by saying he simply had to go meet with a rare book collector, waiting ages to see his collection, oh Crowley, do you mind  _ terribly? _

It would be  _ easier, _ Aziraphale thinks, if he could just stop seeing Crowley. Shake hands on a job well-done and walk away.

But he can’t. Not just for Crowley’s sake -- who has been very jumpy since the bookshop fire -- but his own, also. Aziraphale genuinely  _ enjoys _ his company. They can talk about things they can’t with anyone else. He feels most himself around Crowley. And yes, he worries quite a lot about the hapless demon.

If only Crowley didn’t want to Talk.

It’s been a couple of weeks, and they’re gradually finding their rhythm. And whenever Crowley gets a certain look -- resolve and determination, mostly -- Aziraphale quickly changes the topic to something, and Crowley goes along with it.

Crowley’s got that look again. It’s a hint more  _ stubborn _ now though. 

“Angel,” he says firmly. 

_ Deflect, deflect, deflect! _ Aziraphale thinks desperately. “Where did we get this wine again?” he asks, sipping at it.

“Alsace. 1923. Aziraphale…”

“Oh, what was the name of that gentleman we met in 1919 in Alsace?”

“Etienne, it was 1920, he was the one who gave you the wine the first time.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth to keep the conversation on the topic of France and wines… or anything other than what Crowley’s about to say.

“Don’t,” Crowley says sharply. 

Aziraphale deflates. It’s happening and he’s not  _ ready. _ “Oh,” he says quietly. 

“I love you,” Crowley says into the silence. 

“Ah.” No, not enough. He tries again. “Er.” Still not much of an answer. After a minute of moving his jaw, much like a dying fish, he manages a weak, “Thank you.”

Crowley stares at him and says nothing.

Aziraphale feels, deeply, how inadequate his reply was. And try as he may, he can’t come up with a better one. “Um. Good of you to tell me?” he offers. 

Crowley continues to say nothing. 

Aziraphale tries again. “I need more time,” he says finally. “It’s too soon, Crowley, too fast.”

Crowley nods once, sharply. “You know where to find me, Aziraphale.” He slings his jacket over his shoulders and walks out.

Aziraphale contemplates his wine glass. He drains it, refills it, drains it again, then dispenses with the wineglass entirely.

He’s known Crowley loves him since they stood on the wall. He’s an angel; he can  _ feel _ it. It’s been a constant the six thousand years they’ve known each other. It’s never been said out loud. It’s never  _ needed _ to be. 

Saying it out louds mean they have to acknowledge it, account for it,  _ talk _ about it.

It’s not that Aziraphale doesn’t love Crowley. But he doesn’t think it’s the same kind of love. He loves all of God’s creations. But the singling out kind of love? The ‘you above all others’ kind?

He’s not sure he feels that for Crowley. He’s not even sure he  _ can _ feel that for anyone. Certainly no human, lives like mayflies. No angel, all that smugness and arrogance and ‘oh, Aziraphale, do  _ try _ harder, won’t you?’

Why’d Crowley have to go and say it? Why  _ now? _ Aziraphale just wanted some time to really work it through. A decade, at most.

And Crowley had left. For which Aziraphale does not blame him, but he suddenly feels more alone than ever. No Heaven, no humans, no Crowley.

He’ll be back, though. Crowley always comes back. Aziraphale will just be patient, wait for Crowley to get over this, and then they can go back to being friends. 

By then, Aziraphale may even have worked out what exactly he feels for Crowley.

  
  
  


_ 2119: _

On the 100th anniversary of the day Crowley walked out, Aziraphale pours himself a drink. Alsace, 2023. 

He’s heard nothing from Crowley since that day. Not six months after Crowley had walked out, Aziraphale had worked out he did love Crowley. In the same manner Crowley loved him. The years without him dragged on and on and on. It felt like missing a limb, and not one of the human ones he could do without if he had to.

No, it feels like he’s missing one of his  _ wings. _

_ Today, _ he thinks to himself,  _ Today I will see Crowley. Today our paths will cross. Today he’ll come back and grin and ask what he missed and what I’ve been up to and isn’t England getting really very hot? _

He’s thought this to himself daily since… oh, must be 2047. 

Crowley never crosses his path. 

Today is no exception.

Aziraphale sighs and pulls up the news on his communicator. He’d finally started keeping up with technology. Maybe that’s how Crowley will reach out.

The number for his communicator is the same one as his bookshop had for years and years.

The news is dreadful, again. England -- no more Great Britain, Scottish Independence had succeeded in the 2020s, Welsh and Northern Irish some 20 years later -- was slowly but surely becoming inhospitable. 

He swipes and reads what’s going on in the Northeast States. 

The US had split into about four countries sometime in the 2030s. Hard not to, after the events of the 2020s. 

There’s another pandemic starting there. Aziraphale still remembers the lockdown from 2020. He’d hoped maybe to see Crowley blatantly breaking quarantine rules.

Aziraphale sighs and sets his communicator aside. A lot of the same things throughout history, but he’d never realised how much he’d discussed it with Crowley (especially in the last 1000 years or so) until Crowley just… left.

Aziraphale finishes the wine and trudges to bed.

He’d hated sleeping once. Now, it passes the time.

  
  
  


_ 2219: _

_ Today. I’ll see Crowley today. We’ll laugh about England becoming part of the newly minted United States of America. We’ll open a bottle.  _

But Crowley doesn’t call.

Aziraphale had finally left London in 2188 for less flooded lands. And colder ones. 

It had looked like they’d solve global warming, or at least put the brakes on hard, but a set of idiots had all come into power at once, accelerated the whole thing, and now the planet  _ boiled. _

_ He’d probably think it was pleasant, _ Aziraphale thinks.  _ Hell’s still hotter, and Crowley’s a snake anyway. Maybe today he’ll show up and tell me, ‘oh yeah, one of mine, global warming. Was never  _ warm.’

But Crowley doesn’t come by.

Aziraphale ends the night drunk and sleeps for a week.

  
  
  


_ 2319: _

_ Today. Today. Please, today, please, not another century, not another year, please, let it be today. God, please. _

Crowley doesn’t come.

Aziraphale doesn’t know what current events they’d discuss. He’s stopped caring, stopped paying attention. He knows the planet’s doing better again, but that’s about it.

He only cares about  _ finding Crowley _ again. He walks for days, looking for a particular shade of red.

He flies to other countries and walks there. 

He thinks he’s walked the entire Earth.

No Crowley.

  
  
  


_ 2419: _

_ God, _ Aziraphale prays -- or begs.  _ Please, bring him back to me. It’s gone on long enough. Please bring him back to me. Whatever it takes of me, I will give, but bring him back. _

Crowley doesn’t come.

Aziraphale knows he’s absolutely to blame for this, but he can’t fix this. Not without Crowley  _ coming back. _

He’s tried. He’s dropped by Crowley’s flat, back in 2019 and 2020 and 2021. He’s called Crowley’s number thousands of times. He’s reached out with his angelic senses.

Crowley was never in his flat. His phone was never answered. And Aziraphale couldn’t sense so much as a  _ flicker _ of his demonic essence.

  
  
  


_ 2519: _

Aziraphale tries to forget it’s been  _ five hundred _ years since he saw Crowley. This is beginning to approach their absolute longest stretch of time going without seeing each other, and that had been so, so long ago. Not long after the wall. 

That had been 650 years.

He starts drinking at 12:01am and doesn’t stop until 12:00am the next day.

He sleeps for six months. 

He wakes with the worst hangover he’s ever had -- impressive considering how long ago he’d gotten blindingly drunk -- and finally cries.

_ Crowley. Please, _ he begs, reaching out towards Crowley the way he does to God when praying to Her.  _ Please, please come back. _

Like God, Crowley doesn’t answer.

  
  
  


_ 3019: _

A thousand years. A thousand  _ fucking _ years since Crowley had walked out his door.

Aziraphale can’t even get properly drunk to block out the thought. He’s on a space shuttle. A colony ship heading for the stars. A dying Earth behind them. 

Not even global warming. All those years of panic, and it had been an asteroid. They’d evacuated as many humans as they could. A good 90%.

On massive ships heading for the stars. Generations would be born and die on this ship before it reached a star.

Aziraphale hopes he’s going to be able to keep them from noticing he doesn’t age.

They’d taken what they needed, both to survive for generations on the ship and to settle on a new planet.

The humans hadn’t thought a good stock of wine was needed.

Aziraphale disagrees. He  _ needs _ wine.

He’d hoped -- he’d  _ prayed _ \-- that Crowley was on this ship, too.

But there had been no Crowley. He’d checked. 

He prays that Crowley is on  _ a _ ship going away from Earth.

  
  
  


_ 4019: _

The thousand years on the ship haven’t been kind to Aziraphale. Oh, he looks just the same as he did in 2019 -- he looks just as he did in 4004BC, let’s be fair -- but he’s worn out, worn down, done. 

It’s been 2000 years since he’d frozen. Why had he thought he needed  _ more time? _ Hadn’t  _ 6,000 _ years been enough?

Apparently not.

He doesn’t look for Crowley. Hasn’t since he boarded the ship. 

He can’t remember the sound of Crowley’s voice anymore.

He doesn’t know the exact shade of gold his eyes were.

He can’t remember which side of Crowley’s face the sigil is on.

He wishes there were a way to kill an angel that existed on a fucking colony ship. He doesn’t want to be discorporated and end up in Heaven. He wants to  _ die. _

  
  
  


_ 5019: _

Two  _ thousand _ years after they set out, the cry goes up. A habitable planet. Generations had lived and died on this ship, just as they’d said, but each descendant remembers their mission. They’ve been taught, they’ve been trained.

Planetfall.

Aziraphale doesn’t care. The colony ships weren’t all heading in the same area. Spread out, best chance of survival. Unless one of the groups of humans invent teleportation or warp drives or  _ something, _ the groups will never meet.

They’re not even going to try. What would the point be? Several thousand years on a colony ship for what?

He looks up at the sky. Might as well get to know this planet. He’s going to be here a very, very long time.

The humans are in  _ awe. _ None of them remember the Sun -- Aziraphale does, of course, has missed its warmth for millennia now -- but they’ve all been on the VR deck on the ship. This is nothing like it.

The sky is a soft purple, not blue, and two suns are high in the sky.

_ Binary star system. Forever orbiting, _ Aziraphale thinks, remembering Crowley passionately describing star creation.  _ Loved binary star systems. Made a bunch of those. _ He’d listed dozens.

Aziraphale wonders if he’s standing under the light of stars Crowley had made. He  _ thinks _ he remembers which stars Crowley made.

He asks one of the humans. “Do you know which star system we’re in?”

“Alpha Centauri,” the human answers immediately. 

Aziraphale chokes back an anguished sob.  _ Run away with me, angel. We could go to Alpha Centauri! _

Fitting irony. Three thousand years since he last saw Crowley, and he’s stuck for thousands more on  _ Alpha Centauri. _

He tramps off. He wants to be  _ away, finally, _ from all these humans. He’ll explore the planet himself. 

At first, it’s a directionless march. He just wants  _ away _ from all the humans. They’re nice enough, but they are born and die so quickly. Aziraphale wants peace. He wants someone who understands the  _ burden _ of time.

His pace slows. He’s still directionless, but finally he’s surrounded by absolute silence. He hasn’t heard silence like this in… he can’t even remember. Earth had always been noisy. The ship too. This is complete silence. Not even a wind blowing past.

It’s calming. It’s soothing. 

There’s also a plume of smoke in the distance, Aziraphale realises. He’d seen or felt no lightning. It’s not nearly hot enough for a spontaneous fire.

Is this planet  _ inhabited? _

He now has a goal. He walks towards the plume of smoke.

It takes  _ days. _ At least, he thinks it does. The binary sun rotation is proving a  _ bit _ tricky to figure out.

He eventually stumbles across a small cottage. He laughs in nervous disbelief. 

Rose bushes,  _ Earth rose bushes, _ flourish everywhere. 

He doesn’t want to think it. He can’t help thinking it.  _ Is today the day? Is today the day I finally see him? _

The door opens. A tall, lanky figure stands in the doorway, large black wings taking up the rest of the space. “Better late than never, I suppose,” Crowley sighs.

_ How _ could Aziraphale forget the sound of his voice, or the precise shade of yellow his eyes are, or where the sigil is? 

“Crowley,” he says in amazement. “It’s  _ you. _ That’s… oh, I can’t  _ believe it.” _

Crowley gives him an extremely puzzled look. “Yeah, understood none of that.”

Aziraphale realises. The language had changed in 3000 years. “Ah,” he says helpfully, trying to remember 2000’s-era English. “Better?” he asks. The words, the phrases, they come quickly when he thinks about Crowley, about talking to Crowley.

“Understood that word, at least.”

“This is a shock,” Aziraphale says breathlessly. “I never thought… I never thought I’d find you again. Not after the first half-millennium. Stroke of luck the colony ship came here.”

Crowley’s face shutters. “Then go back to your humans,” he snaps and slams the door.

No, no, no, no, no. Aziraphale can’t, he  _ can’t _ go any longer without Crowley.

It hits him. Crowley had come straight here -- he was still speaking English from 2019. He’d lived here, alone, for 3000 years, waiting for Aziraphale to figure it out.

Aziraphale never had. It had been an accident. 

Crowley had turned a possibly barren planet into a new Eden, a place for  _ them, _ away from it all. He had waited, patiently trained plants to climb everywhere, reared animals -- he can  _ definitely _ hear chickens squabbling -- and  _ waited. _

He does not go back to the humans. He sits on Crowley’s doorstep and waits.

He wonders if Crowley built this house himself. Not with miracles, not by snapping his fingers, but slowly, painstakingly, sawing wood and laying mortar and pounding in nails the human way.

He wonders what Crowley has done for entertainment in 3000 years.

He wonders what else Crowley has wrought in this Eden.

There is a lot of time to wonder. Aziraphale doesn’t know precisely how long has passed, but one of the suns has set and risen since he sat. 

He wonders what the planet looked like when Crowley first fled here.

He wonders how many of these plants existed on Earth ever and how many Crowley bred.

He wonders what the humans he’s brought means for this paradise.

He wonders how long it will be before Crowley opens the door.

Despite having waited for 3000 years, these hours pass the slowest. Crowley is right there, just behind that door, and Aziraphale knows if he opens it, if he forces this now, it will not go well. 

Which is a  _ bit _ upsetting given that the whole  _ problem _ started with Crowley talking before he was ready, but Aziraphale can’t even blame him for that. They’d waited 6000 years. Aziraphale feels like he should have been ready. Even if that meant him just  _ saying, _ “I’m not ready yet to say it, I’m not ready to hear it, Crowley, you are  _ indescribably _ precious to me but it’s not been so long that I was exiled from Head Office, please, more time.”

Crowley finally opens the door and looks down at him. “Not gonna shepherd your humans through this planet? Who  _ knows _ what I created here?”

“Paradise,” Aziraphale breathes. “That’s what this is.” He stands and turns to face Crowley. “I froze, back then. In 2019. I froze and I handled it poorly. Crowley, you’re  _ everything _ to me. I am  _ furious _ at myself that we missed three  _ thousand _ more years because I froze.”

Crowley looks at him steadily. “Not just because you froze,” he says accusingly. “I didn’t hide from you.”

“I didn’t realise,” Aziraphale says quietly. “I never realised. I walked the entire Earth and wracked my mind and  _ never realised _ that you were here.”

“I don’t know what to say to that,” Crowley answers. “But I’ll at least be a good host and offer you tea.”

“Tea? You have  _ tea?” _

“Grow it, don’t I? Everything here I’ve grown or built. With my two hands, not by snapping my fingers. Wasn’t the plan, really. Thought you’d be by within a decade. Came here and started gardening so it would be a bit green by the time you came by. And then I kept going, year after year. Only miracles I used were to make this planet support life a bit faster than intended. Everything else… I was passing time. And you didn’t come, so I started planning a bit more, started building more. Marked the passage of Earth years, of Alpha Centauri years.”

“Why did you stay?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley stares off into the distance. “At first, I thought you were just… thinking. Thought I’ve overestimated how quickly you’d get there. Then…” he laughs humourlessly. “Where would I go? When every day I woke up and thought  _ maybe today he figures it out.” _ He shrugs. “After some decades, I wondered if you  _ had _ figured out how you felt. And I started wondering if you just didn’t feel the same, but now you knew it. I’d always thought you felt the same, but stars, maybe I was just fooling myself. And then I started wondering if maybe you just didn’t know where I was.”

“Why not come find me?”

“It was a test, Aziraphale,” Crowley says, dropping his gaze back to Aziraphale’s face. “Finding me, I mean. I told myself, if you were looking for me for the right reasons, you’d figure out where I was.”

Aziraphale feels tears gather in his eyes. “I failed the test.”

“Yes.”

“Where do we go from here?” Aziraphale asks. He  _ aches _ with the need to never let Crowley out of his sight again.

Crowley shrugs. 

“Crowley, I love you,” Aziraphale says, cursing himself for not saying it back then.

Crowley glances at him. “Do you?” he asks evenly. 

“Do you… do you not love me anymore?” The thought is too horrible to contemplate.

Crowley doesn’t answer his question directly. Instead, he saunters off into his garden without even checking if Aziraphale is following. A large tree grows right behind his house, laden with apples. He plucks one and bites in. He raises an eyebrow at Aziraphale and reaches the apple out to him, a challenge.

Aziraphale takes the apple and bites in. Juice dribbles down his chin. He wonders where Crowley got the seeds.

“I was proud,” Crowley admits. “Too proud to go back and tell you where I was. I should have gone back.”

Aziraphale shakes his head. “You can’t keep taking the blame when I mess up.”

He had thought, at first, that Crowley was unchanged, that only he’d changed in this time. But it’s becoming obvious that those millennia alone on this planet changed Crowley, too. Had they grown apart? Did they no longer need each other?

“I wish I could undo it,” Aziraphale confesses. “That conversation, the waiting, the years without you.”

In another story, maybe that would have done it. Maybe he would have woken up in terror right before The Conversation, and then he would have responded appropriately. Maybe they’d be given a second chance.

But they just stand there in the shade of an apple tree. 

“Doesn’t work like that,” Crowley says, finally breaking the silence. He gives Aziraphale a lopsided smile. “It’s good to see you again, angel.”

“Likewise, my dear.” 

They stand in silence some moments longer until Aziraphale cannot bear it any longer and wraps his arms around the demon. 

Crowley returns the hug immediately and rests his cheek on the top of Aziraphale’s head. 

Aziraphale feels, deeply, this is another moment they could be lost. The time, the distance, the recriminations. He takes a deep breath. “I want us to survive this,” he mumbles into Crowley’s shoulder.

Crowley gently tips Aziraphale’s face up with a finger under his chin. “We have to choose to,” he says. “Both of us.”

“Show me more of our home,” Aziraphale says finally, the meaning under it clear:  _ I choose this. I choose you. I choose us. _

Crowley takes his hand and gives him a small tour. He’s been busy for a long time here; to show all of it would have taken months. 

“What have you called it?” Aziraphale asks as he sniffs a flower. The name doesn’t come to mind, and it doesn’t matter. For all he knows, it isn’t an Earth plant at all. “Eden?” he guesses before Crowley can answer.

Crowley snorts a laugh. “Oh, angel. This was meant to be  _ paradise. _ Why would I call it Eden?” He smiles lovingly at the angel. “I’ve called it Earth.”


End file.
